Are Ugandan employees lazier than Kenyans?
May 01, 2017
Ugandan workers need a lot of supervision, compared to Kenyans who are self-driven and always strive to achieve their targets.
Labour ministry officials cleaning Nakasero Market last week. Photo by Mary Kansiime
By Agnes Kyotalengerire
After being served several warning letters by the disciplinary committee of a prominent marketing firm in Kampala, 37-year old Malaika Nanteza (not real name) was sacked.
Her family knew her to be brilliant and she had worked with the firm for two years. Although Maliaka often met her monthly targets, she was a perpetual latecomer and disrespectful towards clients. In addition, she would also absent herself from work.
Her example comes in handy as we commemorate Labour Day, under the theme "Building the nation through good work ethics." According to Eseza Byakika of Coach Africa, compared to Kenyan employees, Ugandan workers are lazy. "They take things for granted, not until they are in hot soup or summoned, that is when they wake up," Byakika says.
She adds that Ugandan workers need a lot of supervision, as compared to Kenyans who are self-driven and always strive to achieve their targets. She says Ugandan employees do not strive to excel at work.
"For example, they are a bit laidback and do not work on personal growth so that they can deliver better," she explains. Nevertheless, she says Ugandans are better than Tanzanian employees.
A labourer at a cassava grinding mill without protective gear. Photo by Tony Rujuta
The negative attitudes to work by Tanzanian employees, she says, have a lot to do with language challenges and the nature of their education system.
She says their poor competence in the English language is a big barrier for growth and that is why the majority of Tanzania workers struggle at the workplace. Meanwhile, Byakika says Kenyans, especially those in the service industry, beat Ugandans hands down.
"For example, in the hotel industry, managers from Kenya perform better than Ugandan managers," she says. She blames the gap on the curriculum at the university that does not prepare students for the employment world by including tips about personal development and good work ethics.
Echoing her, Sam Lyomoki, a Workers' MP, says Ugandans have a negative attitude towards work, a vice he thinks stems from poor upbringing. He says way back in primary school, when one committed an offence the punishment would be work-related.
"The pupils would be told to slash the compound, dig in the school gardens or fetch water, which created a negative attitude towards work," he says.
He says Uganda should take lessons from other countries and work towards changing people's attitude. For instance, in Singapore, he says the only resource they had was labour (people) and all they did was to work on employees' attitude.
He says before they changed their attitude, engineers did not want to repair cars. It is that same attitude that Ugandan top management employees have and all they think of is delegating.
Lyomoki says great countries are great not by virtue of health, but by the wealth of their virtue and this is where work ethics fall.
However, Martin Turyasiima, the assistant commissioner in charge of services at the Ministry of Labour, Gender and Social Development differs from Lyomoki and Byakika. He says Ugandans are not lazy because those working abroad for example in the US are praised. CLICK HERE FOR MORE
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